HIGH
net/sched IFE Metalist Overflow
CVE-2026-23378
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
KernelScan AI7.8HIGH
01Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: act_ife: Fix metalist update behavior Whenever an ife action replace changes the metalist, instead of replacing the old data on the metalist, the current ife code is appending the new metadata. Aside from being innapropriate behavior, this may lead to an unbounded addition of metadata to the metalist which might cause an out of bounds error when running the encode op: [ 138.423369][ C1] ================================================================== [ 138.424317][ C1] BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168) [ 138.424906][ C1] Write of size 4 at addr ffff8880077f4ffe by task ife_out_out_bou/255 [ 138.425778][ C1] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 255 Comm: ife_out_out_bou Not tainted 7.0.0-rc1-00169-gfbdfa8da05b6 #624 PREEMPT(full) [ 138.425795][ C1] Hardware name: Bochs Bochs, BIOS Bochs 01/01/2011 [ 138.425800][ C1] Call Trace: [ 138.425804][ C1] <IRQ> [ 138.425808][ C1] dump_stack_lvl (lib/dump_stack.c:122) [ 138.425828][ C1] print_report (mm/kasan/report.c:379 mm/kasan/report.c:482) [ 138.425839][ C1] ? srso_alias_return_thunk (arch/x86/lib/retpoline.S:221) [ 138.425844][ C1] ? __virt_addr_valid (./arch/x86/include/asm/preempt.h:95 (discriminator 1) ./include/linux/rcupdate.h:975 (discriminator 1) ./include/linux/mmzone.h:2207 (discriminator 1) arch/x86/mm/physaddr.c:54 (discriminator 1)) [ 138.425853][ C1] ? ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168) [ 138.425859][ C1] kasan_report (mm/kasan/report.c:221 mm/kasan/report.c:597) [ 138.425868][ C1] ? ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168) [ 138.425878][ C1] kasan_check_range (mm/kasan/generic.c:186 (discriminator 1) mm/kasan/generic.c:200 (discriminator 1)) [ 138.425884][ C1] __asan_memset (mm/kasan/shadow.c:84 (discriminator 2)) [ 138.425889][ C1] ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168) [ 138.425893][ C1] ? ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:171) [ 138.425898][ C1] ? srso_alias_return_thunk (arch/x86/lib/retpoline.S:221) [ 138.425903][ C1] ife_encode_meta_u16 (net/sched/act_ife.c:57) [ 138.425910][ C1] ? __pfx_do_raw_spin_lock (kernel/locking/spinlock_debug.c:114) [ 138.425916][ C1] ? __asan_memcpy (mm/kasan/shadow.c:105 (discriminator 3)) [ 138.425921][ C1] ? __pfx_ife_encode_meta_u16 (net/sched/act_ife.c:45) [ 138.425927][ C1] ? srso_alias_return_thunk (arch/x86/lib/retpoline.S:221) [ 138.425931][ C1] tcf_ife_act (net/sched/act_ife.c:847 net/sched/act_ife.c:879) To solve this issue, fix the replace behavior by adding the metalist to the ife rcu data structure.
02KernelScan AI Analysis
Risk summary
A local attacker with network administration privileges can cause kernel memory corruption by repeatedly modifying IFE action metadata configurations. This can lead to system crashes or potentially privilege escalation through controlled memory corruption.
Vulnerability analysis
Root Cause: The IFE (Inter-FE) action's metadata list update behavior was flawed - when replacing an action's metadata configuration, the code was appending new metadata entries to the existing list instead of replacing them. This caused unbounded growth of the metadata list, eventually leading to buffer overflows during encoding operations when the accumulated metadata exceeded allocated buffer boundaries.
Attack Surface: This vulnerability affects the Linux kernel's traffic control (tc) subsystem, specifically the IFE action module. It can be triggered by local users with CAP_NET_ADMIN privileges who can configure tc actions. The vulnerability requires repeated replacement operations on IFE actions with metadata to accumulate entries and trigger the overflow.
Fix Mechanism: The fix restructures the metadata list management by moving the metalist from the main tcf_ife_info structure into the RCU-protected tcf_ife_params structure. This ensures that when parameters are replaced via RCU, the entire metadata list is atomically replaced rather than appended to. The cleanup logic is also updated to properly handle the new structure layout with RCU-safe memory management.
03Fix Versions
| Branch | Fixed in | Patch commit |
|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | 6.1.167 | 56ade7ddea6c |
| 6.12 | 6.12.77 | 91a89d3bdc2f |
| 6.18 | 6.18.17 | cd888c396667 |
| 6.19 | 6.19.7 | 691866c4cca5 |
| 6.6 | 6.6.130 | 5b1449301ca0 |
| mainline | 7.0 | e2cedd400c3e |